Campaign Frame Thoughts

Currently the campaign ends when the stability of either the Stronghold or the Empire drops down to zero. There's also a way for the Stronghold to end the campaign by assassinating the Autarch. I had in mind that there would be some sort of attack by the Autarch afterward.

Ultimately, what I'm interested in is a session that feels like a true finale. Thus, basing the whole campaign around stability may not be the best approach. It makes stability very important in terms of winning, but if it directly impacts how easy it is to win a mission, then the win condition and the resource needed for success are tied together, which isn't a great design choice.

Thinking about the mission types and how they might function in winning, there are:

Stronghold Victory Paths

Warfare - Attacking the Empire's capital wins the game for the Stronghold. This seems like a suitable finale for the campaign. It's really hard to do (capitals can be defended with more units, and the Autarch has a castle there). It will probably happen suitably far in, so the Autarch would be featured in the defense of the capital.

Infiltration - Assassinating the Autarch is another way to win. This is a difficult mission as well. It doesn't feel quite as nice of a resolution, because the Autarch wouldn't be able to defend directly as easily. However, it's so difficult, that it would be something that also would tend to happen far into the campaign.

Autarch Victory Paths

Warfare - Similar to the Stronghold, the Empire can win by attacking the Stronghold's capital. For all the reasons it's difficult for the Stronghold, it's difficult for the Empire.

Skirmish? - The Empire uses Skirmish instead of Infiltration to assassinate heroes. Unlike for the Autarch, though, a hero could get assassinated and the campaign could continue on. Of course, if enough heroes get assassinated, it's functionally over.

Wrath of the Autarch - Alternatively, maybe, at some particularly late stage of the campaign, the Autarch player could force the issue, and start a mission for all of the marbles. If the heroes fail, the Stronghold gets nuked by some sort of powerful magic. This is basically the "Arkham Horror" way to end the campaign.

Support Paths

Diplomacy - In this case, diplomacy doesn't become a primary strategy. It's still very useful, basically essential, in terms of trading goods and building developments, but it's not a primary way to victory.

Skirmish - Skirmish is important, as it's a way to get neutral regions, and many quests use Skirmish. It also would be important for defense if there is some sort of Wrath of the Autarch mission that ends the campaign. In that case, building toward that end point could be a way to win for the Stronghold.

Uses for Stability

If stability is no longer the primary mode for victory, it could play a bigger role in terms of impact on missions. It would also be okay if it swung around more.

Thematically, it also felt a little weird - both the Autarch and the Stronghold basically lose stability over the course of the campaign. It seems like the support of the people should be independent of victory.

I'm not sure what role stability should have, then? It seems like making missions easier or harder is probably a good place for it.

Some options:

• Starting Fate Points - Starting fate points might be an option. If it's lower/higher each side starts with more or less fate points.
• Resources - I'm hesitant to have stability affect resource dice. If it does, it can cause a downward spiral that is impossible to recover from. It also would hit the Stronghold far more than the Autarch, because the Autarch doesn't use resources.
• Campaign Aspects - It's always an option to make new aspects in relation to stability swings.
• Mission Difficulty - If a mission takes place at a faction, the difficulty could be modified by the stability of the faction. This is a really powerful

Summary

I'll have to think about how stability would be used, but I do like having the campaign end in only one of these few ways. I also do like a "Wrath of the Autarch" timer, which basically can trigger if the campaign goes on to long. It's a for good or worse, this is the end, sort of event, which could be good to have.

Streamlining Mission Types and Factions

Even though I've been conscious of trying to minimize complexity while designing Wrath of the Autarch, I haven't really hesitated to throw in everything and the kitchen sink in order to get it to work.

I'm currently in a contraction phase, brought about by seeing trends during playtesting. I've thought of a number of areas which could be streamlined without losing much, if anything, in terms of strategy or interesting choices.

• Trade Missions / Trade Tracking
• Setting up particular trades (X ore for Y timber, etc) and then tracking them is pretty fiddly and not all that interesting
• Instead, Trade Missions (which may need to be renamed Gain Support or something like that) should just increase disposition with the target faction
• Each season, trade is optionally done with factions based on what their disposition to the Stronghold is
• This is a little more fiddly than what I currently have, since the Stronghold players have to decide if they want to trade. Usually the answer will be yes, so hopefully it's not that fiddly
• Because of this, only the disposition with the factions would need to be tracked, not specific trades
• It also makes the Gain Support (previously Trade) missions make more sense. All the fiddliness of setting up a trade, and determining difficulty is gone. It also will make more narrative sense, putting the focus squarely on gaining support for the Stronghold, with most of the issues revolving around the conflict between the Autarch and the Stronghold
• Factions and Developments
• I constructed most of the factions similarly to the Stronghold, with regions, developments, units, stability, population, etc
• I don't think the factions really need development listings
• Instead, they should just have stats based on how difficulty various types of conflicts are
• Ex. Skirmish 4, Infiltration 3, Warfare 6, Diplomacy 5
• Infiltration Missions
• There are three infiltration missions: Espionage, Sabotage, and Assassination
• Each of these mission types has various options for them
• Many of these options relate to the developments each faction has
• These should probably be streamlined, to focus their intention
• Sabotage: Lower the target faction's stability (that's it)
• Espionage: Make it easier to build a development (each one of the five factions will have one of the five tech trees they're good at)
• Assassination: Kill a leader (that includes the Autarch)
• All of the other various options are scrapped (and worse, the need to not only know what mission type to do, but figure out if faction X has development Y)
• Assassination missions aren't all the useful right now, so the leaders for each faction need to have decent role in what makes the faction good at tasks - killing a leader nerfs the faction's effectiveness
• Resources

• At some point, I need to go through the neutral regions that can be found with exploration, and really make them specialized (as in, good at providing a particular type of resource)
• Right now, many of them are sort of a mush
• I also need to go through, and make sure all the resource numbers are as low as possible
• Some resource amounts were sort of arbitrarily inflated (like timber) in order to create various trade charts. Not sure what I was thinking there - but all the numbers should really be as low as possible to keep the math simpler and make it easier to form strategies

What is Wrath of the Autarch?

Bandits are stealing your grain, a border dispute has ignited with Crescent Hold, and the peasants are uprising ever since your guard accidentally murdered an innocent. Amidst all of this, the Autarch's spies are everywhere... it is only a matter of time before they launch a full scale assault. There aren't enough resources to deal with all of these threats, but what gets ignored?

Wrath of the Autarch is a kingdom building role-playing game. The beta rules are complete and freely available here: Beta Rules

I'd love to hear from you! Please post your thoughts in the WotA G+ community: G+ Community or the WotA rpggeek community: WotA on RPGGeek

Wrath of the Autarch features:

• Domain Management
• WotA owes its inspiration from 4X video games, and role-playing games like Birthright, Houses of the Blooded, and Pendragon
• The main character in WotA is the Stronghold, a society the players grow over a number of seasons
• The Stronghold controls regions, large areas of land that can be used to gain valuable resources
• Troupe Style Play
• There are a limited number of available heroes for the Stronghold. These heroes are leaders and skilled characters capable of accomplishing important missions
• Each session of play highlights one season of time, focusing on one important mission for the Stronghold
• The players choose which heroes to play based on the type of mission they elect to undertake
• GMless
• WotA is a set of rules written for a specific campaign included with the game
• The Empire of the Autarch is a powerful kingdom bent on the Stronghold's destruction
• One player takes on the responsibilities for managing the Autarch, while the other players all manage the Stronghold
• The Autarch player allocates points to various threat pools over the course of the campaign, which lets them inflict miseries upon the Stronghold
• There is a strategic interaction between the missions the Stronghold takes as seasons go by and the threats the Autarch wields against them
• Campaign Frame
• There are five different minor factions present in the world, each with different goods and services they're willing to trade for, as well as different capabilities they possess
• Allying with compatible factions is a key part of the strategy for the Stronghold
• The Autarch may sabotage relationships with minor factions using threats
• The factions and the world they inhabit is not fleshed out in detail, giving players a framework to use, but plenty of mechanisms to make it personal and unique
• Structured Missions
• Each season the heroes from the Stronghold go on one mission
• The mission choices are alliance, conquest, assassination, sabotage, or dealing with a looming threat
• Missions consist of a challenge phase and a conflict phase
• Challenge Phase
• The challenge phase is open and flowing, with all the players contributing to the unfolding narrative
• There is a constant time pressure to succeed at the challenges for the Stronghold players
• The Deck of Fate is used to help spur creativity and create challenge scenes
• Conflict Phase
• WotA employs four types of conflicts: diplomacy, infiltration, skirmish, and warfare
• The type of conflict used depends on the mission
• Conflicts use similar action types, but each have their own flavor and tactical options
• Based on Fate Core
• WotA is based on the Fate Core rules, and uses the same four core actions, as well as the familiar skill ladder, stunts, and aspects
• Instead of one type of aspect, there are three, based on their duration: minor advantages, mission aspects, and campaign aspects
• The longer the duration of the aspect, the more important it is, and the harder it is to create
• WotA heavily uses the Deck of Fate (although Fate Dice may be used instead)
• Stunts, developments, and other effects modify how the cards are used
• Stress for success is an option to succeed with cost for any action type: allowing a player to increase their result by drawing cards and applying the suns as physical stress and the moons as mental stress
• A unique relationship mechanic is used that rewards both helpful and hindering relationships
• There is a special system called "aspect burning" which lets players convert free invokes on campaign aspects into other in game effects (units, familiars, allies, advantages in conflicts)

I've tried to provide an overview of the key features that distinguish Wrath of the Autarch from other role-playing games. If it sounds interesting to you, feel free to look over the rules and comment!

WotA, Fate, and Step Dice

I've posted about alternatives to Fate dice before, and it's an idea I keep coming back to as I work on Wrath of the Autarch. Mainly this comes in the form of varying a single dice by steps (d4, d6, d8, d10, etc) and then subtracting d6 from it. The baseline roll of d6 - d6 is a slightly more chaotic approximation to 4dF.

One of the motivations comes from compels. Traditional Fate compels aren't a good fit for the game. Their function is typically to introduce narrative complications into a character's life. They propel the story forward and add new wrinkles.

Will a d14 be needed?

But Wrath already has a mechanism for that. In the narrative phase, players can get narrative control and introduce all manner of complications. If they use an aspect as the basis for that narration, they get a Fate point. They have motivations for adding those sorts of complications.

So far, though, in playtesting, that doesn't generate quite a big enough stream of Fate points to the players. Using step dice presents another, more mechanical, option.

I've been playing with the idea of invoking aspects to step up the first dice, and compelling them to step down the first die. Once the first die is chosen, it's locked into place. After the roll, Fate points may only be spent on re-rolls. This opens up the option of players using aspects negatively against themselves, and just stepping down the first die roll.

This is less valuable than a normal use of an aspect, since it's only an expected value of +1, rather than a guaranteed +2. But it's also a little easier to keep the Fate points flowing, so maybe it will offset.

Also, this opens up some options for sources of increasing die steps:

Developments

It makes sense for different development types, such as Improved Casting, Advanced Armors, Thieves Tools, etc, to grant bonuses to the first die on any applicable rolls.

I would like it if at least some development provides bonuses for each mini-game (Infiltration, Skirmish, Diplomacy, and Warfare). Currently it's pretty random, with some mini-games like Diplomacy not having any such developments.

I'll have to think about that. I do have some developments that I'm not so keen on, and could probably swap out for a different effect.

Stunts

Stunts could also be used for bumping up dice rolls in a similar fashion. It will be tricky, though, to not overlap what developments are doing too much. Developments are more significant, since they apply to every character.

Using step dice also opens the door to stunts like this:

Wild Attack - Step up both the positive dice and the negative dice by one when using Fighting to attack.

So, a character could roll d8 - d8 to attack, increasing the range of the results.

Relationships

Currently characters have bonds with other characters that are just modeled as aspects. I reset all of these with one free invoke to encourage their use.

Another option would be to allow one step up/down on any applicable roll. This would make relationships really desirable, and make for some conscious choices on how characters interact.

Even more so if there are limited relationship slots. Because this is a troupe style game, this would make for some interesting choices when picking characters to take on a mission.

Stronghold Oath

Finally, there might be room for some sort of interaction with the Stronghold. After all, the Stronghold has aspects, and it's assumed that each character feels some way towards them.

So, in a similar style to relationships, having the option to step up/down the dice based on a particular Stronghold aspect might be interesting.

Baseline d4 - d6

If there are *too* many ways to step up dice without spending Fate points, it may be necessary for the baseline roll to be d4 - d6, just because the first dice will frequently get bumped up higher than that.

Rerolls

One thing that stepping up the first dice does is increase the value of re-rolls. As the range of results widens, they become more and more valuable.